Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/142

126 was signed, numbers of beggars hurried through the streets of the city, entered certain houses with letters and came out bearing heavy packages, which they bore off to the poorer quarters, to the suks, the fonduks and the caravanserais. Other meskins hurried to the barracks of the sultan's troops, to the mosques, to the medersas and to the houses of the Fez notables, who were displeased with the supineness of the sultan before the unbelievers. Here and there they stopped to whisper something to a passer-by, and one caught the words:

"Holy War &hellip; Warriors for the Faith!"

Then suddenly a shot was fired that carried the signal throughout all of Fez el-Bali, expectant and excited. Other shots responded like a reverberating echo, and these were followed by a volley in the barracks, where the Berber troops revolted against the sultan and attacked the French. For three days the fight raged in the labyrinth of narrow streets of old Fez, during which white-clad figures stormed the houses of the Europeans and murdered their inmates without mercy.

On the morning of the fourth day the beggars sat in their accustomed places, as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, and the suks and bazaars were crowded as usual, the only difference being the numerous French soldiers that were posted on guard and the artillery mounted on the surrounding hills. It was but in undertones that the word went round that sixty-eight unbelievers had been sent to their death and that three hundred faithful mumeni had gone to Paradise, where in return for their fidelity to the Koran and the Faith, the Prophet Mahomet himself, the protector and defender of Islam, had met and welcomed them.